Taxi To the Dark SideAverage customer review:
An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #329 in DVD
- Released on: 2008-09-30
- Rating: R (Restricted)
- Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
- Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
- Original language: English
- Number of discs: 1
- Running time: 106 minutes
Editorial Reviews
Album Description
Oscarr-nominated director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) investigates the torture and killing of an innocent Afghani taxi driver in this gripping probe into reckless abuses of government power. Disturbing and incisive, the Academy Awardr-winner Taxi To The Dark Side incorporates rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons into its exposure of the Bush administration's "global war on terror." This stunningly crafted narrative demonstrates how this one man's life and death symbolizes the erosion of our civil rights and how what it means to be an American has changed forever.
Amazon.com
Among the slew of documentaries inspired by the post-9/11 war, arguably none is more important than Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side. The story it has to tell, with compelling thoroughness and no recourse to rhetoric, should be as disturbing to Americans supporting the war as it is to opponents. In December 2002, Dilawar, a young rural Afghan cabdriver, was accused of helping to plan a rocket attack on a U.S. base, clamped into prison at Bagram, and subjected to physical torture so relentless that he died after two days of it. But Dilawar was innocent--and he'd been denounced by the real culprit, who thereby took the heat off himself and won points with U.S. forces by giving them "a bad guy." Dilawar was the first fatal victim of Vice President Dick Cheney's devotion to "working the dark side"--torturing, humiliating, and otherwise abusing prisoners in the "Global War on Terror." His story, developed in horrific detail with testimony from the soldiers who tortured him, and also from two New York Times investigative reporters, becomes a prism for slanting light onto the "dark side" policy and the mindset behind it. The program at Bagram was deemed such a success that it served as the model for Abu Graibh the following year in Iraq, and both prisons became pipelines to the detainee facility at Guantánamo, Cuba.
The film's impact is powerful and complex. We come to see the very soldiers who broke Dilawar's body and spirit as victims, too--and patsies of a policy that, from Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on down, ignored the Geneva Convention and shrouded itself (and commanding officers) in "a fog of ambiguity" while the grunts took the fall. A lot of these grunts testify here, and the accumulation of their individual perspectives on a shared tragedy is devastating. The latter half of the film features penetrating commentary from critics of torture as a policy (Senator John McCain was still one at the time), all of whom agree that it doesn't work and it only damages us. And for Theatre of the Absurd, there's a PR tour of (a discrete portion of) the Guantánamo facility, which turns out to be kinda like summer camp: "They get ice cream on Sundays." Finally, Taxi to the Dark Side isn't about torture or politics or the justness or unjustness of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gibney is entirely correct when he says, "It's really about the American character and whether we have become something rather different from what we imagine ourselves to be." He's asking; he doesn't want it to be true. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
"God Mend Thy Every Flaw"/"Do the Ends Justify the Means?"
`Taxi to the Dark Side' is an eye-opener. Starting with the case of Dilawar, a taxi driver from Afghanistan, the documentary traces the lives of terrorist suspects imprisoned in Bagram in Afghanistan; Abu Graib in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba. Showing ample evidence of beatings and abuse, the film has several photographs and much testimony with which to work.
Among the interviewees are some of the suspects who were either court marshaled or imprisoned for their offenses when the scandal became public. Pfc. Damien Corsetti, Sgt. Ken Davies, and Pfc. Willie Brand, among many others, testify about their roles and interrogation methods with the detainees. Effectively, the film makes connections with memos and other evidence to show that there was pressure for these subordinates to take "any means possible" to provide intelligence.
Before viewing the documentary, the news revealed some of the tactics of allegedly "a few bad apples". The use of mean dogs, long seclusion, handcuffs while shackling, beatings, and waterboarding are some of the methods recounted here. The movie also chronicles the brutal deaths of some of the inmates at these facilities.
The film also reveals that only about 7% of detainees were captured by U.S. forces, and many Pakistanis and Afghanis were given large money rewards for the capture of alleged terrorists. Between these pressures and some of the words of Former Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and Vice President, Dick Cheney, the documentary makes a compelling case about a "mean, nasty business" where weasel words like what's done in prison is in "the eye of the beholder" were used.
While I would still like to see a documentary that investigates the beheadings of allies, `Taxi to the Dark Side' presents poignant testimony for matters that went wrong. One of the best testimonies is by writer/director, Alex Gibney's father, Frank B.Gibney, a former navy interrogator, who said in regard to our conduct during war before 9/11, "It was what made America different." Much of the scandal was unveiled by New York Times investigative reporter, Tim Golden, yet some of the most convincing moments come from the life and senate questioning of Senator John McCain, who gives an authoritative presence to an unflinching film with a convincing composite.
Do the ends justify the means? `Taxi to the Dark Side' makes enough of a case where everyone will be forced to come up with an answer.
the horror
"Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Well that quote came to mind as I watched this depressing 2007 Academy Award Winner directed by Alex Gibney (ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM -also excellent). This time Gibney explores America's journey into darkness that is the so-called "war on terror" (BTW people, when you hear the words "war on" before anything you can bet it is a total disaster.). I was reminded of Nietzsche's warning and then of other lines from that great source of dark and enigmatic quotations..."Man is the cruelest animal." "Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." But back to the first quote, I think the men that got us into this situation already were nihilistic, souless beasts and so hardly did much changing. What we should realize is that *they changed America.* I am well aware of America's "mistakes" and sins of the past but things are different now... and many of us feel it. On top of that -and more importantly- sadly many, all too many, of the people they chased after weren't monsters at all, but just people. Regular people in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Take the story of "a young rural Afghan cabdriver", named Dilawar. Turned out he was falsely accused of helping to plan an attack on American troops. Dilawar was tortured for about two days and died. He is presented here as "the first fatal victim of Vice President Dick Cheney's devotion to 'working the dark side'--torturing, humiliating, and otherwise abusing prisoners in the 'Global War on Terror.'" We are told his story by the very soldiers that killed Dilwar, themselves shown to both tools and victims of the implementation of the Bush policy. And we hear from two New York Times investigative reporters who do a fine job of exposing this darker side of American power -- a darker side the New York Times I cannot help but remember helped in their ways to bring us to.-- Ohhh I hope you are aware of that?! You didn't forget did you? That drum beat for war was pounding so very loudly at the NYT. The name Judith Miller ring a bell? Well, she's just *one* of 'em. The whole mainstream media let us down and let us NEVER FORGET it. The film also details what methods are used in torturing prisoners: you won't ever let a right-winger or Rush Limbaugh "Dittohead" trivialize torture and Abu Graibh and the prsion camp at Guantánamo.
Buy this or at least rent it and get others to see it too. While it is depressing it is fascinating to anyone with any interest in foreign policy and concern for our country and it's future. It is NOT to be dismissed as a mere anti-Republican, anti-Bush diatribe à la Michael Moore. This is an objective, sober documentary about a subject every American absolutely regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum should be in touch with and have intimate knowledge of. It is our business what our government does in our name and the blood is not only on their hands.
Be Prepared to Seriously Reconsider Your Complacency
About the only nice thing you can say about this administration after viewing this film is that you could probably not have made a similar expose about the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps in Nazi Germany during WWII. Still, it's a shame that we have to look to Nazi Germany to find a government that treated its enemies more despicably or a society more complacent about the heinous crimes committed by their government in their name.
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